


The End of All Things

by wildeisms



Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Apocalypse, Bad Things Happen Bingo, Fate Worse Than Death, Gen, Heavy Angst, Immortal Klaus Hargreeves, Immortality, Paralysis
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-11
Updated: 2021-01-11
Packaged: 2021-03-15 13:55:47
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 557
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28689789
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wildeisms/pseuds/wildeisms
Summary: Klaus had felt pain before. He’d thought he had a good idea of what unbearable pain felt like, of how it felt to be tortured. He had been wrong.The original apocalypse happens. Surrounded by death and unable to die, Klaus is left to lose his mind under the rubble.Bad Things Happen Bingo Fill:And I Must Scream
Series: Bad Things Happen Bingo [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2102898
Comments: 1
Kudos: 31





	The End of All Things

**Author's Note:**

> This is a miserable snapshot of non-stop suffering. But I love the immortal Klaus theory and the fact that when Five discovers the bodies of his siblings, Klaus is the only one whose eyes are open, was perfect for this prompt.
> 
> Other fills will probably be longer, but short and definitely not sweet felt best for this one.

Klaus had felt pain before. He’d thought he had a good idea of what unbearable pain felt like, of how it felt to be tortured. He had been wrong.

The world was burning and so was he. Every nerve inside him was on fire, his ears still ringing from the explosions. It was worse than any withdrawal or injury. His body had been ripped apart, agony splitting every cell apart and filling the spaces between them. He wished for unconsciousness, for his mom, for freedom from the pain. Failing that, he wished for death. 

The dead surrounding him didn’t know how lucky they were.

The ghosts were everywhere and he couldn’t look away. He couldn’t blink, couldn’t even move his eyes. Overlapping voices and figures reaching out to him became a singular shape and sound, a cacophonous mess of tormented souls, each one indistinct from the next. In the end, they were all just a singular entity of ‘the dead’. 

_ I can’t help you. I can’t. Please. _

But he couldn’t even tell them that. He couldn’t say anything or do anything. Why did they think he could help? He was as trapped as they were, in the ruins of his childhood home, paralysed under a layer of rubble and dust. His physical body was just as useless as their non-corporeal forms, perhaps even more so. They could move, descending down on him in a tsunami of suffering, could scream and beg and wail. Could they still feel pain the way that he could? 

If he could see through the wall of spectres, he would have tried to locate his siblings in all of this. But he couldn’t. He couldn’t even see Ben. Was he just another part of the endless stream of ghosts now, no longer stronger than the rest of them? Were his other siblings there too, just a few more figures in the chaotic crowd that took up every inch of Klaus’s vision? Was he the last one left?

Perhaps little Vanya had survived. She hadn’t been at home, he didn’t know where she was, and he had no way to know for sure that she was dead. Maybe she was somewhere safe.

He doubted it. 

There were so many ghosts. There was so much pain. It was as if he had been injected with the dying agonies of thousands upon thousands of people, more than any one person could ever take. And now they clamoured for his attention, screaming at him in an incoherent din of desperate hysteria. He wished he could scream. It was all too much for his mind and body to handle. When the world started to go black, he sobbed internally in oxymoronic torment and relief. 

Consciousness came and went. Time passed, but Klaus couldn’t say how much. Sometimes it was light and sometimes it was dark, but the screaming from the ghosts and his body were constant. Each time he started to fade out again, he prayed to whatever god there might or might not be that it would be the last time, that the pain would finally end for good. He prayed that he wouldn’t come back. Even as his mind slipped away like sand through a child’s fingers, one thought remained.  _ I wish this would end. I wish I could just die _ .

He never got his wish. 


End file.
